Those who
think the links between Southern Baptists and theocratic Christian
Reconstructionists are tenuous need to look at the inside the front cover of the
December issue of the Chalcedon Report. There the chief publishing house for
Dominionist thought, Chalcedon, announces that it has published Bruce Shortt's
book, The Harsh Truth About Public Education.
Bruce Shortt, along with T.C. Pinckney, leads the movement against public
schools within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Pinckney, who led SBC Fundamentalists to leave
the moderately controlled Baptist state convention in Virginia, wrote a forward
to Shortt's book. Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, who organized the
Fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, endorsed Shortt's book.

We've read this script before. First they attack
the schools, then they organize a movement to take them over, and then they take
them over. They did that in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Now they are taking on the public schools. When
they are done, we will have a system of religious schools and home schools,
paid-for at public expense, that will dutifully indoctrinate children in their
theocratic ways.

For all those school teachers who are fed-up with
the bureaucracy in public schools, you are going to love working for these
autocrats.

For all those moderate realists and pragmatists
who think this scenario is a little far-fetched, all but a few Baptists thought
the same thing about the SBC twenty-five years ago.